Gigabyte P55-UD6 LGA1156 Motherboard Review‏

BIOS Rundown

When we reviewed the Gigabyte EP45 series motherboards we noted that we were pleased by the marked improvements in the BIOS department. Well Gigabyte have taken it upon themselves to kick things up a notch once again, and their P55 models feature a few noticeable changes in the BIOS department. Let's take a closer look at what's new.


The full screen logo has obviously received a revamp to highlight a few of the P55-UD6's selling points, but that's irrelevant since any self-respecting power user will disable it immediately to reduce the boot time.


The initial selection screen should be broadly familiar to anyone who has used an Award-based motherboard in the past, and it conveniently lists the GIGABYTE-specific MB Intelligent Tweaker (M.I.T.) section as the first menu. This is where enthusiasts should expect to spend 99% of their BIOS time.


Upon entering the M.I.T section, Gigabyte veterans will see that the layout has changed dramatically. No longer is this section merely one long page. It has been broken down into several sub-sections. Also, there are now a few critical voltage and temperature readouts immediately visible, which is nice addition.

The M.I.T Current Status is a completely new section which gives you a quick general overview of all the system frequencies, multipliers and timings.


The Advanced Frequency Settings section is where most of the the fun happens. It gives you control over the of the essential system clock control options: CPU multiplier, QPI multiplier, BLCK frequency, memory multiplier, PCI-E frequency, and clock drive settings. This BIOS does give you direct access to the unlocked static CPU multipliers, you don't have mess around with enabling/disabling various settings.

Within the Advanced Frequency Settings section is the Advanced CPU Core Features sub-menu, which is where you can enable or disable the various CPU-specific settings like Turbo Boost, the number of cores, multi-threading, C1E, C-state level, Thermal Monitor, Enhanced SpeedStep, etc.


As its name suggests, the Advanced Memory Settings section is where you will find all the memory-related settings. Within this section you can select the memory multiplier, change the performance profile, enter the memory and QPI (VTT/Uncore) voltages, and obviously tweak the memory timings. Each memory channel has its own section, within which you can alter the primary and secondary timings. It had just about every memory setting that an enthusiast or overclock will need to fine-tune their memory modules.


The Advancted Voltage Settings section obviously contains all the system voltage settings, namely CPU vCore, QPI/VTT, PCH, CPU PLL, DRAM, DRAM Termination, and memory channel reference voltages. This is also where you can select the proper Load-Line Calibration (LLC) option. There are four settings: Auto, Standard, Level 1, and Level 2. Auto and Level 1 are the same and provide slight vDroop adjustments, Standard turns off LLC, and Level 2 completely eliminates vDroop.


The Standard CMOS Features section displays all the connected storage devices some basic system memory information, and of course the date and time.


The Advanced BIOS Features section is where you can set boot device priority, enable HDD S.M.A.R.T checking, disable the boot-delaying logo, as well as choose which expansion slot is used to initialize the display.


The Integrated Peripherals section is where you can enable or disable all of the various onboard devices (RAID controllers, audio, USB, FireWire, eSATA, LAN, etc).


As on most Gigabyte motherboards, the PC Health Status section is a slight disappointment since there isn't exactly an abundance of voltage and temperature readouts. Oddly enough, the PCH temperature readout that is found in the M.I.T section is nowhere to be found here. On a motherboard of this caliber there is no reason not to have all vital voltages available for scrutiny in the bios.

For those who don't plan to use the SmartTPM 2048-bit hardware encryption feature then you can disable the onboard Infineon TPM (Trusted Platform Module) chip.


This last screenshot is of the Q-Flash utility which is accessed via the F8 key. Since Q-Flash is built right into the BIOS and it can read files directly from a USB flash drive, BIOS flashing is now a simple and quick procedure. We have never experienced an issue with this well implemented tool, and it has certainly made the flashing process a little less stressful.